Here is my Tuesday June 9 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com review of the Sunday afternoon June 7 Chicago Symphony Orchestra "Beyond the Score " program on Dvořák's Ninth Symphony, From the New World, with Sir Mark Elder conducting, Gwendolyn Brown, contralto, and Gerard McBurney, creative director.
Dvořák's best-loved work gets CSO royal treatment
BY ANDREW PATNER
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra hit a long double Sunday afternoon. It both wound up its annual "Beyond the Score" series with one of its best offerings yet and presented another outstanding installment in its ongoing three-week Dvořák Festival.
The subject of analysis and demonstration Sunday was Dvořák's most familiar and loved work, his E minor Symphony No. 9, Op. 95, (From the New World), written in 1893 during the composer's 2½-year stay in the United States.
As he does each time in the series, creative director Gerard McBurney and his colleagues have gathered a wonderful set of period film clips and photographs as well as readings from letters, diaries, reviews and recollected conversations. And as he does when the series is at his best, he offered a script that was informative, convincing and never over-reaching.
We've always known that the piece, Dvořák's greatest success not only in America but around the world, reflected encounters he had in New York with African-American musicians -- his patron and host, Jeannette Thurber, was far ahead of her time in creating a conservatory open to all regardless of race, gender, or background. And we know of the fascination that he and other Europeans had with Native Americans, whether through actual connections, or more usually, imaginative depictions.
McBurney, though, gave us perhaps the most clear and sensible account of what came when and in what order in Dvořák's planning out this major 40-minute work, including his fascination with Wagner as a "religious" composer. With Nicholas Rudall portraying Dvořák and Steppenwolf's Francis Guinan taking other roles, McBurney's focus was on Dvořák as great-souled man and curious and respectful listener and watcher -- whether to or of people, birds, or locomotives.
With superbly selected and timed excerpts performed by the CSO under Sir Mark Elder's direction, points were clear, insightful, and with plenty of "a-ha!" moments. Elder's leadership of the full work after intermission was all the richer for the opening hour of analysis and background, but was also one of the finest performances I've heard of the piece since Carlo Maria Giulini's here 30-odd years ago.
Sunday also marked a wonderful breakthrough for Chicago contralto Gwendolyn Brown (above), an alumna of Lyric Opera of Chicago's training program and a regular at Lyric as a cover and in small roles. Her interpretations of Negro spirituals, with ever-dependable pianist Elizabeth Buccheri, were deeply moving, even stirring. She also absolutely captured the harmonic, narrative, and dramatic qualities of this music that spoke so directly to Dvořák. Stunning.
So is From the New World ultimately a European work? A Czech one? American? Folk-inspired? Romantic? Wholly invented? Indebted to other traditions?
None of the above. And all of the above. That is the magic of this piece; demonstrating that was McBurney's achievement Sunday.
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